Another Good Loving Blues [Hardcover]

Arthur Flowers (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1993

A blues-playing pianist tries to hold on to the conjurewoman he loves as she searches for her long-lost mother, in an odyssey across a blues country flavored by a gumbo of different voices and histories. 15,000 first printing. $10,000 ad/promo.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In prose which evokes the blues lyrics that provide this novel's background, Flowers ( De Mojo Blues ) tells a prepossessing modern fable about loyalty in the sonorous voice of a third-person narrator, a "griot" (storyteller) also named Flowers. This alternately playful and solemn tale focuses on the love between Lucas Bodeen, a suave, piano-playing bluesman, and Melvira Dupree, a stubborn conjure woman. In 1919 they leave the Mississippi Delta for Memphis, on a "hoodoo mission" to locate Melvira's elusive mother, but before finding her they're drawn to rollicking, jazz-infected Beale Street, a stopping point for many hopeful Southern blacks on their way north. The author downplays Beale Street's violence, drugs and prostitution in favor of its lively atmosphere and the creative people, who in his view make up a trustworthy, cooperative "tribe." Flowers's characters lead by example: Bodeen, though inclined to wallow in the blues, kicks his whiskey habit, while Melvira looks for ways to help rather than harm with her dangerous magic. Skeptics will find that good luck prevails rather too frequently here; nevertheless, this is a spirited effort, one that even includes a cameo by the young Zora Neale Hurston.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In a style that flows as smoothly as the music that forms its core, Flowers ( De Mojo Blues , Dutton, 1986. o.p.) has woven a fable of the South that captures the heart of the blues musician as few others have done before. "Every good man needs a real good woman," sings bluesman Lucas Bodeen at the height of his passion for Melvira Dupree, a conjurer in Sweetwater, Arkansas. But Lucas temporarily loses sight of his need and his love when subjected to the fast life and temptations of Memphis's Beale Street. How Lucas and Melvira pursue separate quests but manage eventually to find each other and to reconcile their love form a pretty, if predictable, tale bordering on fantasy. Flowers, himself a native Memphis blues singer, has captured the time and place to perfection. Readers interested in this culture will be fascinated.
- Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. at Carbondale Lib.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (February 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670848212
• ISBN-13: 978-0670848218
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,526,303 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Flowers Reigns *****, May 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Another Good Loving Blues (Paperback)

Arthur Flowers has created the most beautiful love story to come out in years.I was drawn into the world of Melvira, Luke, and the Delta's conjure women. I gained a deeper appreciation for the blues, (that I could hear gliding across the pages)as I savored the flavor of this magnificent work.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A SOULFUL STORY HUMMING WITH BLUES, ROOTS & LOVE, October 22, 2002

By 

Jomo Ray (Newark NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Another Good Loving Blues (Paperback)

Talk about how (as a character suggests in the movie "Hurricane") "sometimes a book chooses you"... Was it quirky intuition or some funky higher power that moved me when, as I was about to leave the library, a sudden urge made me turn around and, overlooking all the other fictions on the shelves, with unknown purpose shuffle aside the books in a bin until my hand lit on this one. Had never heard of the author or the book (although the title was appealing), but something inside of me whispered "Read this!"

Whatever the spell, subconscious or spooky, I'm glad I did. This was a book that started out good and only got better; read it practically overnight. In the end, it was Arthur Flowers' vibrant storytelling, so warm and alive with understanding of human frailty and fullness of spirit--like a downhome, latter-day incarnation of the oldtime poet who said, "I am human, therefore nothing human is alien to me"--that spoke to me, made me smile and ache and glow.

"I am hoodoo, I am griot, I am a man of power," he trumpets at the opening in a verbal fanfare, a narrative device echoing and acknowledging ancient oral tradition; there is power in the word and magic in the story. "My story is a true story, my words are true words, my lie is a true lie--a fine old delta tale about a mad blues piano player and a Arkansas conjure woman on a hoodoo mission.... Plan to show you how they found the good thing. True love. That once-in-a-lifetime love.... because when you find true love my friend its strictly do or die."

Set in the Mississippi River delta country in and around Memphis, Tennessee, at the dawn of the Jazz Age, ANOTHER GOOD LOVING BLUES tracks the sweet & sour course of the relationship between bluesman Luke Bodeen--peacock proud, stylish and sure--and alluring, stiff-necked hoodoo woman Melvira Dupree, who's haunted by her past and future. Yet other rivers run through it: memories of arcane gods and religious rites variously practiced by descendants of African slaves throughout the Americas; the trickle, then stream, of Southern blacks fleeing impoverished indenture in the fields for the promise of Northern urban opportunity post-World War I. Race-conscious workingclass intellectuals gather with college-trained professionals to debate Garvey vs. Dubois, the church vs. traditional African religion. The periodic floods of "The Great Muddy," the mighty Mississippi itself, become legend in song and story.

It's territory that Zora Neale Hurston (who makes a "guest appearance," as does W. C. Handy) plumbed and celebrated, and more recently Ishmael Reed: the nexus of history and folklore, literal and visceral, sanctified and streetwise.

But, aah, the core of the story, that man-woman thing! Heart of the blues. "You don't know what love is until you know the meaning of the blues," goes the famous song. Flowers, a veteran bluesman himself, is especially deft, and searingly compassionate, showing "how to go down like a natural man" after Luke breaks off with Melvira:

"Lucas Bodeen let the music say all the things he wanted to say to her. O baby, I love you so. I don't understand why or nothing, I just love you. Lucas Bodeen played his heart out, another man hurting cause my baby's gone and o the loving sure was good blues.

"O God baby, how could you really leave me?

"Tears.

"...After awhile the music start getting good to him, and ol Bodeen, he forgot all about how bad he felt. Got into the music, made that piano stand up and do tricks. No matter how much trouble you got in mind, the blues tend to remind you that the sun is going to shine in your back door someday. For all the pain it cost him, he had to say he was glad she had come into his life. Don't do for a man to live and die without having known at least one great love in his life. He would have hated to have died without having ever felt like she made him feel."

Flowers, besides his talent, experience and skill, obviously has considerable affection for all his characters; all the people of this book live and breathe. What's more, he tells a plethora of stories and all of them involve you. And his triumphant narrative voice is the finest, most lyrical and comprehensible use of Southern black vernacular I've ever read. I love this book: It's a work of enormous heart, healing and redemption. Told plain and simple, touching and to the point. ("Literature and hoodoo," says one character, "both are tools for shaping the soul." "Spiritwork," says another. "Sacred literature... Rootwork.") Let this nexus of love, blues and hoodoo work its magic on you.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a wonderful book!, October 9, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Another Good Loving Blues (Paperback)

Need something to cozy up to and sweep you away on a mighty good time? Get this book. The writing is lush, beautiful, yet concise. It's a good read. Thank you Mr. Flowers! And keep on writing. I, for one, want more.